the.com/open ocean
Where the map runs out of names and the water just keeps an opinion.
means The vast stretch of sea far from any coastline, too deep and remote to be named after a shore it touches.
from "Ocean" traces back through Latin oceanus to Greek Ōkeanós, the great river the ancient Greeks imagined circling the entire flat disk of the world — a boundary-water, not a destination. "Open" is the plainer Germanic word for unenclosed space. Put together, the phrase is modern and functional, a sailor's and cartographer's term for the water once you've left all the named gulfs, bays, and straits behind — the part of the sea with no coastline to borrow its name from.
- actual size
- over 90 percent of ocean volume, barely explored
- nearest solid ground
- sometimes miles straight down, not sideways
- food strategy
- eat anything smaller, avoid anything bigger, repeat forever
- nickname
- the pelagic zone, sounds fancier than empty